Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
"When Norman Lear decided to destroy the American image of European American blue-collar workers . . . he created the fictitious Archie Bunker and used the character's fictitious words, thoughts and actions to denigrate and defame all European American blue collar workers. It worked."
And how it worked - and works!
Quite a few years ago, when I was still conducting a fair number of celebrity
interviews for mainstream papers, I interviewed the actress Sally Struthers,
a very blond, very shrill character on "All in the Family," a
half-hour sitcom made immortal by Archie Bunker, the Bigot of all racial
Bigots.
In this sitcom, Struthers played the "enlightened" - i.e., politically
correct - daughter of a blue collar family, married to a hippie-type "reformer".
The young couple's main purpose in life was to ridicule, denigrate and decimate
their parents' European blue-collar value system.
When I did this interview, Sally told me that she felt "having been
used" by the Hollywood establishment. She said: "I may be blonde,
but I'm not dumb." She did not elaborate on this statement, which at
the time was puzzling to me, because the sitcom clearly made her famous
and must have brought her riches. I didn't think the character she played
was dumb; her "father's" character was dumb. In fact, he was so
"dumb" and "racist", a two-by-four applied to his forehead
would not have made a difference.
He just didn't get it that being "politically incorrect" was on
the way out!
It was not until recently when one of my readers objected to a term I carelessly
used - "redneck," describing the "Southern white male"
- that it really hit home for me what Sally may have meant. She hated being
made a party inadvertently in perpetrating a stereotype - albeit someone
else's stereotype.
Archie Bunker the Bigot was at her expense. It did not fit her image.
Likewise, my image of myself is not that of a person who would defame and
denigrate the white blue collar worker of European background - why would
I have wanted to do that? Yet all the same, I did.
We need to look at this closely - how we help keep the stereotypes alive
that hurt our kin and lifestyle.
Take words we seldom challenge and even help to circulate: "Acting
white", "albino", "angry white male", "arkie",
"bubba", "cracker", "eurotrash", "fundamentalist",
"goy", "hick", "hillbilly", "hun",
"Joe Sixpack", "kraut", "lily-white", "mick",
"neo-fascist", "neo-Nazi", "okey", "pale-face",
"potatohead", "swamp Yankee", "WASP", "white
boy", "whitey", "wigger", and "yokel".
All these are denigration labels applied to white, European-descent people.
We would be hard-pressed to find or tolerate those kinds of slurs describing
Asians or Arabs, for example.
The booklet points out a telling "for instance":
". . . (w)hen European Americans are the ethnic group being ethnically cleansed from an area, occupation, university or neighborhood, it is usually demeaningly labeled "white flight", even though there is no evidence that European Americans wanted to depart."
How true!
And it occurred to me as I was studying this syllabus that since the "olden"
Archie Bunker's days, the stereotype of the white male has been refined
from "Bumbling Idiot" to "Angry Bigot." The stereotype
has become younger, more narrow, more violent - the young white male, these
days, is the "Extremist" you always hear about!
Why, Archie Bunker, by comparison, is nothing but a pussycat!
According to this syllabus, which seems to be a grassroots effort, a leading
spokesperson for the "white racism" stereotype is one Professor
Mari Matsuda who has taught law in Hawaii, Michigan and California. The
syllabus defines "Matsuda's Libel" as ". . . (t)he racist
idea promoted by Mari Matsuda that European Americans are uniquely and uniformly
racist, and more so than any other ethnic group."
And not just within academia.
According to Hate Crimes Coordinator for Santa Clara County District Attorney
George Kennedy, Anastasia Steinberg, the profile of the "hate criminal"
is definitely the white male between 19 and 26. Ms. Steinberg has become
so thoroughly identified with this defamatory stereotype, according to the
booklet, that her profile statement has become known as "Steinberg's
Lie."
The syllabus states that the young white male stereotype as the perpetrator
of hate crimes
". . . is promoted by malicious people who argue, directly or indirectly, that members of most European American ethnic groups cannot be or are never victimized by hate speech or hate crimes. Consequently, this stereotype is known as the "victimless majority" stereotype. European Americans are not seen as deserving the right of self-designation and the right to an ethnic voice."
And no one thinks that odd!
Another version of this stereotype is known as "Hirschhaut's Lie"
and holds that
". . . no minority group in San Francisco should be allowed to become fair game for the bigots and haters among us."
Presumably, that's you and I!
It is no secret to the rest of us that Americans of European origins have
been subjected to a blistering campaign of defamation since World War I
- and ever more noisily so for at least the last twenty-five years. Media
and Hollywood keep telling us in brain wash avalanches precisely whom to
hate and fear - the largest ethnic group in the U.S. - the white folks of
America:
"The diversity of ethnicity is regarded as newsworthy, and as indicative of racist possibilities. The exception is when the victim is European American or the perpetrator is non-European American - then any ethnic analysis is usually suppressed by print and electronic media."
"Passive Ethnicity" is defined in this booklet as:
"The stereotype that European Americans must be silent in the face of defamation , discrimination, hate speech, malicious prosecution and hate crimes.
"In the white basher's mind, European Americans are the sole source of racist tendencies and the sole perpetrators of racist or hate crimes and actions
"European Americans are never seen as the victims of racist or hate crimes and actions, (and)
"The only group in society that needs to change is the 'white' group, and this change will heal racism throughout society."
A final stereotype is that of "white skin privilege", defined
as:
"The absurd and racist notion frequently embedded in public discourse that all white people have an advantage in all walks of life. This bizarre notion is widely held by self-loathing European Americans in print media and academia . . . Just look at who is homeless on our city streets and sidewalks."
Just look!
This booklet can be seen as One Small Step for Man . . . Published by Resisting
Defamation, 2530 Berryessa Road, # 616, San Jose, CA 95132, $3.20
Thought for the Day, slightly paraphrased:
"Political Correctness is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen."
(Ambrose Bierce)